The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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10:47am on Sunday, 22nd October, 2023:
Anecdote
I finished Baldur's Gate 3 last night. I clocked up 232 hours in it, but I'm not sure if that includes the time I spent completing act 1 during early release. Still, it's excellent value for money.
I was never going to like it as much as BG1 or BG2 because it's all about mindflayers (which is clear from the opening credits, this isn't a spoiler). I hate mindflayers. I don't like playing games where my character is taken over, and that's what mindflayers do. In the end, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I still hate them.
The companions are well-designed, but they're so up for romance that at times I had to fend them off with a stick. There aren't as many of them as there are in BG1 and BG2, either, which is a pity. Party size is four, rather than six, which may explain it but doesn't excuse it. I'm sure new characters will be available as DLC at some point.
There are some old favourites who show up later that I believe in retrospect I could possibly have recruited, but I got one killed during a 30-minute battle and killed the other three on purpose, so that didn't happen. The one I got killed was a particularly annoying case, because I maybe could have resurrected them if I'd invited them to my group first; as it was, they didn't respond to Speak with the Dead so I couldn't invite them afterwards.
Normally, I play these games as a paladin. This is so that I can lead from the front without being one-shotted and can heal myself when the papier-mâché cleric gets one-shotted. I did that when I played in early release, but decided that this time round I'd play something else for a change. I went with a sorcerer, on the grounds that I needed magic and didn't like the mage. I was one-shotted by enemies and traps far fewer times than I was expecting, which was a pleasant surprise.
A lot of act 3 is about gathering allies for the final battle. I did all the side-quests that I'd come across, so had a large coterie of them at the end. Unfortunately, there was no indication which battle actually was the final battle, and when I reached it it wouldn't let me summon allies anyway. I guess I should have summoned them in the second-to-last battle. Oh well. I did get some nice buffs off a couple of them, though, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.
It turned out that I didn't need to search every crate, barrel and vase nor to pick up every piece of food I found.
Minor spoilers ahead.
The companions that made up my party most of the time were Shadowheart, Lae'zel and Karlach. Hmm, so all the female ones — that wasn't deliberate. I romanced Shadowheart, on the grounds that I was always going to need a cleric and if I had a steady girlfriend then that would stop the others from hitting on me (although it didn't). Getting hit on by my guardian was an experience I certainly don't want to repeat.
I did slot in the other primary characters when I wanted to work on their personal quests. Wyll is ineffective. Astarion is great for one round then he's dead. Gale lacks flexibility. Halsin is second-rate at everything. I didn't recruit any hirelings during the entire game, but I may do if I replay it so I get a bit of variety. It turns out you don't need a thief if you have a sorcerer wearing a Warped Headband of Intellect and Gloves of Dexterity.
The first phase of the final fight was meant to be epic but turned out to be easy. I paired up my characters and used Dimension Door twice for each pair in the same turn to get me right across the arena without having to hack my way through enemies. I'd saved up all my Divine Interventions, but didn't need any of them. Karlach shredded the final boss like pulled pork.
I was reasonably satisfied by the ending I got. I don't think I'd have managed to engineer a better one, anyway.
My habit of scrolling through the credits paid off and I got a final cut scene.
Overall, I really enjoyed BG3. The turn-based combat worked well and allowed for a lot of experimentation and innovation, like with BG1 and BG2. All the balance issues you get in multi-player games don't really matter if it's just you playing. Larian did a good job.
I look forward to BG4.
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Copyright © 2023 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).